Game speedrunning fanatics as soon as found {that a} greasy disc was the important thing to enabling an enormous time-saving trick in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom on the unique Xbox. Speedrunner SHiFT, the present leaderboard champ within the sport, reveals how, with the appropriate console technology selection, the appropriate drive, the appropriate configuration of greasy smudges, and with mastery of the ‘lag clip’ approach, you can full SpongeBob working from the optical drive in file time.
Lag clip:
Rapidly pausing and unpausing the sport causes the laser to skip because it seeks the menu background music. This opens up a glitch permitting level-skipping possibilities in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom.
The above video is partly a detective story, because the aggressive speedrunning neighborhood focuses intensely on any not-so-obvious pace benefits that may be achieved. The dream is to slice seconds off the completion time of this sport and obtain a speedrun of below 40 minutes. SHiFT discusses how the gunked-up sport disc tactic was confirmed as a successful technique, whereas not breaking any neighborhood pointers.
The unique Xbox model of the SpongeBob sport is the default selection of the speedrunning neighborhood, because it has sooner loading than the PS2 and GameCube versions. However, there were various versions of the Xbox, too. For example, there are four different optical drive manufacturers, among other nuanced differences. So, detective work and experience were used to narrow down the best vintage machine.
Speedrunners, including SHiFT and Zim, worked for hours testing various combinations of optical drives, laser modules, and connector cables. They even wondered if the video chip (which varies between production years on Xbox) or the TV connector method had an impact on timings. In a daze from a super-long streaming session, they eventually decided to look at the condition of the disc. It was smudgy, but it could be worse…
An inspirational moment then occurred, and they tried making the disc filthy and smeary with grease and sweat. However, it was ultimately found that a strategically placed pattern of smears, with eight strokes emanating from the center like the petals of a flower, was a winning choice. This grease config made it easy for the player to induce the elusive lag clip timesaving technique – no hardware tinkering necessary – without making the optical disc unreadable.
They had found “the holy grail” of SpongeBob lag clipping speedrunning. SHiFT’s conclusion was confirmed in some correspondence with the then-champion among SpongeBob speedrunners, who goes by the unimproveable handle swagmasterdoritos. The master admitted, “I clean my discs via licking them then using a pillowcase to wipe and clean.” An image shared by swagmasterdoritos showed the spit-cleaned disc featured petal-like streaks. That’s how they had been enjoying super-slick lag clipping throughout the game: there was nothing particularly unique about their original Xbox.
Two new entrants have broken into the top five of the leaderboard in the last five days, but SHiFT’s time of 40m 27s is still more than 90s ahead of the nearest challenger. Nowadays, the community has given up on optical disks. You will see that all the top SpongeBob speedruns play the sport from the Xbox HDD. Some thought lag clips have been too inconsistent, and that probably damaging sport discs by smudging or scratching them was unethical.
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